


Haunted

by MikazukiMunechika305



Series: MajiGaku Royalty AU [2]
Category: AKB48 & Related Fandoms, Majisuka Gakuen
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 15:54:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15368058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MikazukiMunechika305/pseuds/MikazukiMunechika305
Summary: {“Hey… are you angry?” The girl’s voice was playful, but there was something absolutely frightening about it. Maybe it was the fact that she was still grinning even when her hands were covered in blood.}But despite that first impression, Yuki somehow knew that there was more to the girl in front of her. Maybe she was just as haunted by her past as Yuki was.(Takes place two years before Devotion)





	Haunted

_When Yuki woke up, there was smoke everywhere. Even at the age of ten years, she could immediately tell that something was immensely wrong. A nervous whimper left her lips as she climbed down from her bed and opened the door to her room. “Mama? Papa?!”_

_There was no reply from her parents, but Yuki could see fire at one end of the hallway._

**The end of the hallway where her parents’ bedroom was located.**

_For a moment, Yuki forgot to breathe. Then, she left her room and ran closer to the fire, as close as she dared to go. She could already feel the heat of the flames on her cheeks and hands, and with a fearful gasp, she realized that the door to her parents’ bedroom was surrounded by flames._

_There was no way they’d gotten out alive because if they had, they’d already have woken her up and taken her along._

_Yuki started sobbing when that realization dawned on her. She collapsed to the floor in despair, but when the flames grew even closer to her, she managed to get up again and run back to her room. Knowing that there was no other way, she opened her window and stared down at the grass below it. A cough left her lips, and she hesitantly climbed onto the windowsill._

_Then, she saw the flames in the hallway through her open door, and jumped. When she landed, she hit her head on a rock and passed out._

_From that day on, all members of the Kashiwagi family were considered dead._

 

It was late in the evening, but there was a festival going on, so there were still many people out in the streets. Yuki made use of that as she slipped through the crowd, always making sure to stay hidden. Occasionally, she would stop next to someone for a moment and casually slip her hand into their pocket, quickly taking out the person’s wallet before disappearing at a nearly inhuman speed.

She had just gotten to the point where she thought that she’d stolen enough money to survive the next week when she suddenly heard a pained, fearful scream, the sound accompanied by crazy laughter. That alerted Yuki quite a bit. Recently, there had been no crimes heavy enough to scream about in the kingdom, so she decided to try and find out who this fearsome person was.

Making use of her ability to blend in with the darkness around her, Yuki followed the sound of the scream, soon stepping into an alleyway far from the festive main road and discovering three figures at the end of it. They seemed to be fighting; one, a girl who looked like she was about Yuki’s age, was laughing madly while the other two, young men in clothes that matched the festival’s theme, were trying to defend themselves against the girl’s hits.

And then, Yuki heard it.

“Hey… are you angry?” The girl’s voice was playful, but there was something absolutely frightening about it. Maybe it was the fact that she was still grinning even when her hands were covered in blood.

The young men scrambled back, frantically trying to find a way out of this situation, but the girl grabbed one of them and smashed his head against the wall of one of the houses surrounding them.

Yuki’s eyes narrowed when she thought she could hear a cracking sound in the silence of the night.

The man collapsed, completely motionless, and his friend cried out in fear. “Please, let me—”

But the girl didn’t listen. Instead, she picked something up—taking a tiny step closer, Yuki saw that it was a broken glass bottle. The girl brought the bottle down on the man’s head with a crazy laugh before placing her hands around his neck and tightening her grip. Soon, the man went limp in her hold.

Shivering slightly, Yuki decided to stay for a bit longer, until someone else came. She wanted to see what the crazy girl was going to do next.

The girl dropped the dead body and turned around as if she was looking for something. “Hey, isn’t anyone else around? This is boring…” Another chuckle left her lips, but then, she suddenly went completely still. For a moment, her body was rigid, but then she collapsed, staring at what she had done in utter shock.

“N-no… what did I do…” Suddenly, she sounded completely different from before. The craziness was completely gone from both her voice and expression, she simply looked outright frightened now. “It happened again…” Sobs shaking her body, she curled up on the ground, hugging herself tightly.

Yuki’s eyes narrowed slightly. There was something about this girl—she couldn’t exactly point out what it was, but she suddenly had a feeling that she couldn’t leave her alone here. Quickly, she moved closer to the girl, touching her shoulder. “Get up.”

The girl winced sharply, looking up at her in fear. “W-what?”

“I said, get up. Come with me.”

“You… you’ll take me to prison, won’t you?” the girl whimpered, turning away from Yuki’s touch. “I…”

Yuki groaned barely audibly and pulled the girl to her feet. “ _I_ won’t take you to prison,” she muttered. “But if we stay here any longer, people will come and take both of us there.”

That seemed to make the girl snap out of her thoughts. She held onto Yuki’s hand tightly as she followed her, staggering slightly.

Yuki pulled her along as fast as she could and soon reached the tiny hut that she’d lived in for the past two years. They were far enough from the crime scene now, and she decided to take a look at the girl’s injuries first. She took out a match to light a candle while asking, “Are you injured?”

“E-eh?”

“Are you hurt anywhere?” Yuki repeated, already reaching for the box she kept some bandages in, just in case she needed them. “I’ll take care of it.”

The girl stared down at her hands, trying to inspect them in the dim light of the candle Yuki had lit. “Um… no, I don’t think so.”

Skeptically, Yuki raised an eyebrow and stepped closer. “You must be. There’s so much blood, after all.” She reached for a bowl and filled it with water from a jug, placing it on the unsteady table in front of the stranger. “Put your hands in here.”

The girl did so, not making a single sound of pain when her hands sank into the water. Soon, the water was completely red from all the blood from her hands, and there was still more on her arms.

With a sigh, Yuki emptied the bowl and filled it again, rubbing the girl’s arms carefully in order to get the blood off faster. The girl was still sobbing, but it didn’t sound like she was in pain at all; Yuki’s eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re… really not hurt,” she muttered to herself when she saw that there were no cuts or anything similar on the girl’s arms.

Hesitantly, the girl nodded. “I… rarely get hurt when things like this happen…”

“Do they happen a lot?”

For a moment, it was silent in the room. Then, the girl’s sobs grew a little louder. “S-sometimes, I just… lose control…”

Yuki sighed and got up to empty the bowl again once the girl’s arms were relatively clean. “Calm down; you should stop crying. What’s your name?”

The girl looked away. Then, she softly spoke up, “…Rena. But nobody has called me that in years.”

“Rena… I’m Yuki. People call me Black, though.”

Rena nodded weakly; maybe that was her way of saying _Nice to meet you_ right now. “…why?”

“What?”

“Why did you take me here? I’ll just snap again and hurt you.”

Yuki took a while to reply. She put the bandages away again and took out a small loaf of bread, placing it down on the table in front of Rena. Then, she sat down opposite the other girl again and answered the question she’d been asked. “…I don’t know. But you’re not just a killer, are you? There’s more to you than that.”

Rena smiled shakily as she picked up the bread and took a bite out of it. “M-maybe you’re right… but I’m dangerous, so it’d be safer—”

“Oh, were you saying something? I don’t think I heard that.” The tiniest of smirks spread on Yuki’s lips as she got up. “I’m a criminal, I don’t do things that are safe.”

For the first time since they’d met, Rena gave her a smile that looked genuine.

 

In the next morning, Yuki was the first to get up. She splashed her face with water in order to wake herself up properly before shaking Rena awake.

During the previous night, they’d basically slept on top of each other, and Yuki was secretly glad that Rena hadn’t lost control and killed her in her sleep. Now it was time for them to pretend to be normal girls and do what had to be done—which mainly meant shopping, since Yuki had given her last bread to Rena earlier.

Rena looked very sleepy, but she easily agreed to help Yuki out.

“By the way… what should I call you?” Yuki asked, just before they left her hut. “In the kind of society you’re in right now, we call each other by nicknames. That’s safer than the whole kingdom knowing our real names.”

Unable to help herself, Rena raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t you say you don’t do safe things?”

Yuki simply gave her a brief glare. “In that case, just consider ‘Rena’ a stupid name for a killer. What I saw last night didn’t resemble this Rena very much, anyways.”

Rena’s head dropped a little and she nodded reluctantly. “Then… Gekikara, for when I’m… like that. And maybe… we could separate between that… creature and me?”

Hearing Rena call her ‘other self’ a creature surprised Yuki a little, but she simply shrugged. “Whatever you want. Well, if you call her ‘spicy,’ then maybe… the you of right now would be ‘mild,’ huh?”

The other girl looked a little relieved and nodded quickly. “Amakuchi, then. Thank you.”

Without giving a response, Yuki simply jerked her head towards the door and left the hut first. Rena followed her in silence and they first headed towards a bakery that Yuki always bought her food at. The older girl quickly picked what she thought they’d need for the next few days and raised her eyebrow in slight surprise when Rena suddenly grabbed her wrist. “What is it?”

“Can we… buy some melon-pan?”

Yuki considered it for a moment, but then came to the conclusion that it probably wouldn’t do any damage. When they left the bakery with three loafs of melon-pan in addition to the other food Yuki had picked, Rena already looked considerably happier than before.

They did the rest of their shopping in silence, and when they arrived at Yuki’s hut again, the older girl stopped short in front of it. “It’s… a bit small, isn’t it?”

Rena looked at her in surprise. “What?”

“Well, if there’s going to be two of us living here from now on…” Yuki left the sentence unfinished, but the other girl nodded slowly, understanding what she meant.

“So… what do we do?”

Yuki jerked her head slightly, motioning for Rena to follow her, and led the way to a street not far from where she used to live. “There’s a few abandoned houses here. Pick one you like.”

Judging by Rena’s expression, she wasn’t very used to being able to make choices, but it didn’t take her long on a small house that had a few steps leading up to its door. If it hadn’t been so old, it would have looked lovely, and if Yuki hadn’t been a thief for so long, she might have had some appreciation for its looks rather than its usability. Either way, they needed a place to live that was bigger and safer to live in than Yuki’s hut, so Yuki didn’t protest and instead led the way inside.

The house was dusty and not very big, but it was still better than the hut. In a small box in what seemed to have been the kitchen, they found a rusty key that fit into the lock at the front door, much to Yuki’s secret joy. There were two bedrooms with creaking beds and a room that looked like it used to be a living room, and from one of its windows, they could see the well they were going to get their water from.

“You made a good choice,” Yuki muttered to Rena while they were putting their purchases away in the kitchen, and Rena gave her a tiny smile.

 

A few days later, they had spent most of the money Yuki had stolen before their first meeting. Yuki got up early and she had already opened the front door of the house when Rena caught up with her.

“Black—let me come with you.”

Yuki considered it for a moment. Then, she shrugged slightly. “As long as you’re not a hindrance to me.” She left the house and locked the door when Rena had followed her outside.

Everything went well for them until somebody bumped into Rena and pushed her away a bit too forceful. Rena lowered her head to apologize for bumping into him, but he grabbed her collar and pushed her back against the wall of a nearby house, making Yuki stop in her tracks and turn to watch them, alarmed.

“Now, ya should really watch where you’re goin’ more, milady,” the man grinned, reaching up to squeeze Rena’s cheek. “How about you make it up to me—”

“I’m sorry, but I’m not interested.” Rena’s voice had suddenly grown considerably colder than it had been only moments before, and Yuki moved a bit closer to them, assuming that something bad was going to happen. Her instincts had never been more right.

The man laughed and still didn’t let go of Rena, and Rena’s head dropped, her eyes closing for a second. Then, when she looked up again, there was a mad grin on her lips. “Hey… are you angry?” It was the same teasing tone she’d used when Yuki had first seen her.

“Of course I am! You just—”

Rena didn’t let him finish his sentence. Instead, she pushed him back forcefully and punched him hard enough to make him double over in pain.

Immediately, Yuki was by her side. “Gekikara!” she hissed, pulling the girl back. “Stop this! We can’t raise any suspicions!”

Rena stared at her for a moment before trying to free herself from Yuki’s hold, but Yuki didn’t let go and dragged her into a nearby alleyway. Their struggle for control went on for a few minutes, with Rena landing a few successful punches in Yuki’s face and upper body, but the older girl didn’t even consider giving up.

Eventually, Rena went limp in her hold and looked away, the madness fading from her face. “I… I’m sorry, Black.”

Yuki sighed and let go of her. “It’s okay.”

“No… no, it’s not. I hurt you this time, right?”

“It’s just a few bruises; I’ll be fine. I get bruises all the time.”

Slowly, Rena nodded, although she didn’t look very convinced yet. On their way back, she was silent, and that night, she was beset with nightmares.

 

_“Get up already! Gosh, you’re such a useless kid. Always getting in my way…” Rena’s mother kicked her daughter’s shin hard enough to make the girl whimper in pain. “And now, smile! Remember, you have to leave a good impression on our guest!”_

_Rena bit her lip and nodded, a smile spreading on her lips in an attempt to overwrite the pain and nervousness in her eyes. She failed at that, but at least the smile was there, so she hoped her mother would be pleased._

_Her mother didn’t complain, and she ran to open the door when someone knocked at it. “Kintaro-san!” she greeted the man standing outside, a smile on her lips. “It’s so good to see you. Let me introduce you to my daughters, Rena and Jurina.”_

_Rena stepped next to her and gave the man a smile, curtseying for him. “I’m Matsui Rena, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”_

_Her little sister followed her, giving the man a smile as well but reaching for Rena’s hand before she introduced herself. “Matsui Jurina, sir.”_

_Their mother led their guest inside, offering him a seat on the small sofa that was usually just big enough for her along with the two girls. Now, with two adults sitting on it, there was no space left on it and 12-year-old Rena and 6-year-old Jurina had to stand next to it._

_There was nothing for the two of them to do while their mother was talking to ‘Kintaro-san,’ so Jurina soon started fidgeting and tugging on Rena’s hand. “Hey, Rena-chan, let’s go play something. It’s so boring here.”_

_Rena shook her head and leaned down to whisper into Jurina’s ear. “We can’t, Jurina, you know that. Mum will get mad if we leave now. Please, you promised me you’d be good today, didn’t you?”_

_Jurina pouted, but nodded slowly. “Fine, fine. Sorry, Rena-chan.”_

_They made it through forty more minutes. Then, Jurina started bobbing up and down, humming to herself. Rena tried to keep her busy as much as she could by quietly playing ‘I spy with my little eye’ with her, but eventually, Jurina stomped down on the floor with her foot. “But it’s boring here, Rena-chan! I wanna play something else!”_

_Their mother turned around to them, glaring at them threateningly. Rena bit her lip and ushered Jurina out of the living room gently. “Go and play something, then, Jurina. I’ll join you soon, okay?”_

_Jurina still didn’t look entirely happy, but she obediently left the room while Rena returned to her mother’s side, knowing that she was going to get punished for not keeping Jurina in check._

_Indeed, her mother slapped her hard as soon as Rena was back next to her, leaving scratch marks on her cheek. “Didn’t I tell you two to be quiet?!”_

_“Y-you did… I’m sorry for disturbing you, mum, Kintaro-san.” Rena bowed, her voice shaking slightly when she murmured her apology. “Please… don’t be mad at Jurina. She’s still so young after all…”_

_Her mother clicked her tongue in annoyance. “Shut up, brat. You’ll make up for it somehow; think of a way by yourself. And now get us something to drink. And smile!” she reminded her older daughter when Rena was about to head to the kitchen._

_Rena managed a shaky smile and hurried to the kitchen where she allowed herself to let out a few tears. Then, she got the drinks her mother had asked for and returned to the living room, her smile back in place._

_“Well… at least you can do this.” Her mother and Kintaro drank together and Rena took their empty glasses back to the kitchen obediently. “Now, sing for us, Rena,” was her mother’s next order. “You like doing that, right?”_

_Rena did indeed like singing. She sang a lullaby for both Jurina and herself every night, and occasionally, she dared to hum to herself when she was cleaning the house. Singing usually made her feel at ease; it was something within her control, something that didn’t cause her pain. But now, she only felt nervous. Her mother had never asked her to sing for her before, so the urge to please her was great. The 12-year-old did everything in her might, trying to sing as well as she could, but halfway through the song she was singing, her voice broke and she couldn’t get herself to continue._

_“Idiot!” her mother scolded her, frowning angrily. “At least smile, if you’re already failing like this!”_

_And through the pain of her mother slapping and scolding her again, Rena put on another bright smile._

_Later that night, after Kintaro had left, their mother entered the small room Rena shared with Jurina. The younger girl was already sleeping, although not as peacefully as Rena would have liked, and Rena herself was preparing to go to sleep as well._

_Their mother took Rena’s nightgown from her in order to get her attention. “Wake up Jurina,” she ordered, her voice a little slurred from the alcohol she’d drunk together with Kintaro._

_“W-what? Why?”_

_“She needs her punishment, too…”_

_“N-no, please…”_

 

“…don’t hurt Jurina!” Rena screamed, shooting up into a sitting position, her eyes wide in shock.

Within a second, Yuki burst into her room, a little relieved to see that it only seemed like Rena had had a nightmare. “Amakuchi,” she spoke up, calling the other girl by the nickname they’d picked for her calm personality. “What’s wrong?”

Breathing heavily, Rena looked over at her and tried to calm down. “…it’s nothing, I’m sorry,” she muttered. “It… was just a nightmare.”

Yuki sighed quietly, but sat down on Rena’s bed. “…I have those too, sometimes. But they’re not real.” Her voice was quiet and somewhat bland, and to Rena that sentence sounded like an excuse the other girl had made to herself countless times before.

But right now, no matter how emotionlessly Yuki had just said that sentence, Rena found some kind of relief in it. In silence, she lowered her head until it rested against Yuki’s shoulder, and Yuki slowly reached out to stroke Rena’s hand.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be with you from now on.”


End file.
